Chinese tech giant forced to use basic version of operating system after US group joins trade war.
Following the US crackdown on Chinese technology companies, Google has cut off Huawei’s Android license, dealing a huge blow to the besieged phone-maker.
The world’s second-largest smartphone maker is facing the prospect of being shut out of the world’s most popular smartphone operating system after being placed on a “banned entity” list by the White House, which forbids US companies to supply it with technology.
Reached for comment, a Google spokesperson said “We are complying with the order and reviewing the implications.” The order, in this case, appears to be the US Commerce Department’s recent decision to place Huawei on the “Entity List,” which is a list of companies that are unable to buy technology from US companies without government approval.
A Google spokesperson confirmed that “Google Play and the security protections from Google Play Protect will continue to function on existing Huawei devices.” So while existing Huawei phones around the world won’t be immediately impacted by the decision, the future of updates for those phones as well as any new phones Huawei would produce remains in question.
Huawei is now restricted to using the Android Open Source Project (AOSP), cutting the company off from critical Google apps and services that consumers outside of China expect on Android devices. That also means Huawei will only be able to push security updates for Android once they’re made available in AOSP, assuming the company uses its own update system.
Tim Watkins, Huawei’s vice-president for western Europe, warned: “The future is not so certain.” Huawei has cast itself as the victim of the ongoing trade war between the US and China, and Mr Watkins said the company was “caught in the middle”. He said the group had been preparing for the worst, after becoming a target for the US last year, and that it had been working on its own operating system, which “can kick in very quickly”. He noted that the OS has been trialed in some parts of China.
Huawei smartphones and some of its other products have effectively been kept out of the United States for years, but the company’s business has grown rapidly in Africa, Asia and Europe, where its affordable prices have been embraced by consumers and by phone companies that use its antennas, base stations and other equipment to make wireless networks.
This has created a huge speculation in the tech industry on whether Huawei will be able to overcome this Ban, and will they be able to launch their own Operating System, which they have been working on.
Since its Huawei, we can expect a major comeback and lot of changes in the telecom industry as well.
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